In Focus Kenzie Knight, USA

many others, I learned that meditation is a call to prayer and to find rest in God. Meditation can be summarized for me in the phrase “mutual gazing,” as Fr. Martin Laird, O.S.A. beautifully expressed it –reflecting the meeting between God and me.

I have deepened my practice this fall as the JMC Fellow for Christian Contemplation for 2022-2023, which is generously sponsored by the Trust for the Meditation Process. My biggest observation has been the nonlinear distractions becoming less and less as I meditated more. But this has not been the case. I have noticed distractions are frequent still after years of practice. And I am learning to be okay with that -- that God is not asking me to be perfect but just to simply be.

My meditation experience began when I was a nervous first-year student at Georgetown University. Feeling overwhelmed, I would find myself at the John Main Center for Meditation & Dialogue (JMC) seeking silence, simplicity, and stillness. At first, meditation was an escape from the hecticness of college. I was looking for a moment of rest in the midst of such a huge transition. What I did not realize at the time was the invitation to which God was calling me.

Through my experience at the Center and exploration of the teachings of John Main, Laurence Freeman, and nature of the practice. That is, I have noticed sometimes distractions are constant and at other times I can be attuned to God’s presence so clearly. I sometimes experience both on the same day!

I discovered that I have brought expectations of a perfect practice to meditation. I assumed my meditation practice would be a linear progress with

Even still, this nonlinearity can be frustrating and disheartening at times. So, I am learning how to sit with this frustration and my distractions in meditation, welcoming them as guests rather than seeing them as intruders, because accepting the presence of these feelings is as much a part of the process of the practice as finding stillness is. I remind myself of the words of Jesus: “Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” The invitation of meditation is to find rest in the restlessness, to embrace the difficult nature of letting go. It is not about perfecting the practice but is a way to be with the messiness of life. It is about reorienting the way we think about our relationship to God, ourselves, and others.

Meditation is simply the invitation to meet God within us and recentre on that love – to sit in mutual gazing. No matter how the practice unfolds, God and you are there in the present moment – and that is all that matters.

Editor:

Leonardo Corrêa (leonardo@wccm.org)

Graphic Design: Gerson Laureano

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